A Student in Arms

Mr. Donald Hankey was killed in action
on the Western Front on October 26, 1916.

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INTRODUCTION

THERE is nothing in literature rarer as there
is nothing more attractive than the note of originality. We can
all of us now make fairly good copies, but unfortunately a copy,
however accomplished, is always a copy. In literature, moreover,
we do not merely have first-hand copies of great models, but
copies of copies of copies. Smith does not model himself on Stevenson
direct, but upon Jones, who again copies from Robinson, who derives
through Brown, White, Black, Green, Thompson, and Jackson. What
the reader of these Essays, if he has any instinct for letters,
will at once observe is the absence of the imitative vein, not
only in the presentation of the thoughts but in the thoughts
themselves. The Student in Arms cannot, of course, find essentially
new subjects for his pen. It is far too late to be ambitious
in that respect. Besides, in dealing with war and the men who
go forth to battle, he must necessarily treat of the great fundamental
and eternal realities---of life, death, the love of man for his
fellows., sacrifice, honor, courage, discipline, and of all their
effects upon human conduct. It is in his handling of his themes,
in the standpoint from which he views them. that the Student
shows the originality of which I speak. The way in which he manages
to escape the conventional in word and thought is specially noteworthy.
Most men nowadays can only achieve freedom here at a great price---the
price of persistent effort. The Student in Arms, like the Apostle,
had the felicity to be born free. Nature appears to have endowed
him with the gift of seeing all things new. He perpetually puts
things in a fresh light, and yet this light is not some ingenious
pantomime effect. It has nothing forced or theatrical or fantastic
about it. It is the light of common day, but shed somehow with
a difference.

I would rather leave it at that, but if I
must try and push my analysis farther, I should say that the
special quality of mind that the Student in Arms has brought
to his anatomy of the mind and soul of the British soldier---the
Elizabethans would have called his book The Soldier Anatomized---is
his sense of justice. That is the keynote, the ruling passion,
of all his writing. There is plenty of sternness in his attitude.
He by no means sinks to the crude antinomianism of "to understand
all is to pardon all." His ideal of justice is, however,
clearly governed by the definition that justice is a finer knowledge
through love. He loves his fellow man, and especially his fellow
soldier, even while he judges him. That is why his judgments,
though they are meant to be and are practical reports on the
mind of the soldier, are in the best sense, works of art. They
have in them the essential of all art---passion. It is not enough
to say there is no art where there is no passion. Wherever there
is passion there is art.

Beyond this originality of view, this finely
tempered sense of justice through love, and this passion and
so creative force, there is a genial sense of humor and a scholarly
feeling for words, which sent the Student in Arms forth wonderfully
equipped for the task he has chosen. He is the critic in shining
armor who stands guardant regardant beside the soldier in the
field.

What is his task? Consciously or unconsciously,
I know not which it is, to interpret the British soldier to the
nation in whose service he has laid down his life, and dared
and done deeds to which the history of war affords no parallel.
One rises from the Student's book with a sense that man is, after
all, a noble animal, and that though war may blight and burn,
it reveals the best side of human nature, and sanctifies as well
as destroys. A passage from one of the articles will show what
I mean better than any attempt to anatomize the anatomizer. Here
is a picture full of humor, friendliness, and power, of how the
"lost sheep" in a Kitchener battalion, what the uninspired
and unseeing man would call "the wastrels," take their
training---

They plunged headlong down the stony path of glory, but in
their haste they stumbled over every stone!, And when they did
that they put us all out of our stride, so crowded was the path.
Were they promoted? They promptly celebrated the fact in a fashion
that secured their immediate reduction. Were they reduced to
the ranks? Then they were in hot water from early morn to dewy
eve, -md such was their irrepressible charm that hot water lost
its terrors. To be a defaulter in such merry company was a privilege
rather than a disgrace. So in despair we promoted them again.
hoping that by giving them a little responsibility we should
enlist them on the side of good order and discipline. Vain hope!
There are things that cannot be overlooked, even in a "

Kitchener battalion."

We see the men before our very eyes in the
light of the camp. Now see the Student's revelation of them as
they stand in the glory of battle

Then at last we "got out." We were confronted with
dearth, danger, and death. And then they came to their own. We
could no longer compete with them. We stolid respectable folk
were not in our element. We knew it. We felt it. We were determined
to go through with it. We succeeded; but it was not without much
internal wrestling, much self-conscious effort. Yet they who
had formerly been our despair, were now our glory. Their spirits
effervesced. Their wit sparkled. Hunger and thirst could not
depress them. Rain could not damp them. Cold could not chill
them. Every hardship became a joke. They did not endure hardship,
they derided it. And somehow it seemed at the moment as if derision
was all that hardship existed for! Never was such a triumph of
spirit over matter. As for death, it was, in a way, the greatest
joke of all. In a way, for if it was another fellow that was
hit it was an occasion for tenderness and grief. But if one of
them was hit, O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is
thy victory? Portentous, solemn Death, you looked a fool when
you tackled one of them 1 Life? They did not value life 1 They
had never been able to make much of a fist of it. But if they
lived amiss they died gloriously, with a smile for the pain and
the dread of it. What else had they been born for? It was their
chance. With a gay heart they gave their greatest gift, and with
a smile to think that after all they had anything to give which
was of value. One by one Death challenged them. One by one they
smiled in his grim visage, and refused to be dismayed. They had
been lost; but they had found the path that led them home; and
when at last they laid their lives at the feet of the Good Shepherd,

what could they do but smile?

With all sincerity a Commander of today might
parody Wolfe and declare that he would rather have written that
passage than win a general action.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.

The Spectator Office.

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

THE articles which follow owe their existence
mainly to two persons, of whom one is the Editor of the Spectator,
and the other is---not myself, at any rate. It was the second
who made me write them in the beginning, and it was Mr. Strachey
who, by his constant encouragement and kindness, constrained
me to continue them. If there is, as he says, any freshness and
originality in them., it is the result, not of literary genius
or care, but of an unusual point of view, due to an unusual combination
of circumstances. So let them stand or fall ---not as the whole
truth, but as an aspect of the truth. In them fact and fiction
are mingled; but to the writer the fiction appears as true as
the fact, for it is typical of fact---at least in intention.

My thanks are due, not only to the Editor
of the Spectator, who is godfather to the whole collectively,
and to nearly every article individually, but also to the proprietors
of the Westminster Gazette, to whose courtesy I am obliged
for permission to include "Kitchener's Army" and "The
Cockney Warrior."